


when our color dies

by restnowatlas (inhumane)



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: ...sort of, Canon Compliant, Fluff, Getting Together, Hurt/Comfort, Language of Flowers, Light Angst, M/M, Nicknames, Synesthesia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-30
Updated: 2017-12-31
Packaged: 2019-02-24 02:06:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,475
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13203474
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inhumane/pseuds/restnowatlas
Summary: “When we get back on Earth, the very first thing I'll do is buy you a bouquet of purple hydrangeas.”“God, you're so cheesy.”“You love it anyway. You loveme.”“...”“Keith?”“...Yeah, I do.”Splutters.“Who's the cheesy one now?!”





	1. 色

**Author's Note:**

  * For [captain mushroom](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=captain+mushroom).



> i still don't have the faintest idea as to who you are but all shall be revealed in time. i hope you adore this small creation of mine. it may not seem in accordance with what you wished for but do not fret for there are pet names in here. sadly, not as cheesy as you wanted it to be. i've also dedicated two parts for this, the first in lance's point of view and the second in keith's, which i am writing right now as you read this note or talk in the group chat. unfortunately, it is not as lengthy as lance's but still holds substance that i hope will pull some of your heartstrings. happy holidays from your secret santa.
> 
> (title from the song _careful hands_ by _sleeping at last_ )

起: the introduction

 

When Team Voltron returns to the Castle of Lions after a somewhat successful recon mission, Lance starts to notice something weird…

“Buddy, are you okay?” Lance cannot answer Hunk’s query because… he is _staring_. His best friend is surrounded by a mysterious faint yellow aura. It looks and feels like a stray light of the morning sun peeping through his window and caressing his cheek after he blinks himself awake from a good night sleep.

Lance finds his missing voice, then: “I’m not okay; I’m hella fine.” Hunk visibly groans at his flippant response and waggling eyebrows but wholly accepts it. Lance instantly notes the change in color of Hunk’s aura. It looks and feels like a yellow towel that he wraps around himself after he takes a relaxing hot bath.

Despite the peculiarity it brings, Lance can’t help but feel warm.

✦

After hosting a debate in his head, Lance finally puts the blame on the planet they just surveyed. He remembers seeing nothing but monochrome, remembers the drabness it reeks, remembers the misery etched on the faces of the inhabitants of that planet for no longer being able to see color. According to them, the only way they can recover their colorful sight is for Voltron to pulverize the Galra Empire into cosmic dust. Lance and the rest of his team went home somber after that particular exchange.

“Cargo pilot.” Lance gasps softly at the fingers around his wrist. He looks down and sees purple, whose shade is identical to the hydrangeas that grow in front of the flower shop near his childhood home. He once consulted the florist for the meaning behind it but now, even as he tries to recall the memory, it seems to elude his mind.

“Mullet.” At his acknowledgement, Keith’s hand gently lets go but Lance still can’t stop gawking at his wrist because… there are stains of purple that Keith left behind, like he wants Lance to never forget about him. 

“Are you okay? You have been staring into space for a while now.” Keith promptly grimaces at what he said before tacking on as an afterthought, “…No pun intended.” But instead of bestowing him an answer, Lance becomes aware of an aura that is also surrounding his [so-called] rival. It is red and it looks like the jerseys the sports teams of his high school used to wear, so vibrant and so distracting.

“You’re the second person to ask me that, but I’m alright. Don’t worry your mullet over it.” Keith, for some unknown reason, doesn’t buy it but before he can even open his mouth to retort, to _challenge_ , Shiro commences their usual debriefing and everyone immediately shuts up.

The stains of purple on his wrist fade away like the warmth of Keith’s hand. 

✦

Lance doesn’t know what to do. He tries to grapple his Lion’s controls but the sudden feeling of nausea has become overwhelming, hindering him from doing so. He just wants to vomit. The very first time he saw the Galra’s aura, it feels like he just down violet cough syrup that is supposed to taste fruity and make him feel better but only leaves an acrid taste in his mouth. He needs to seek Allura after this fight as soon as possible. She might have an inkling of what is happening to him. She is, after all, a magical princess.

“Lance, watch out!” For a moment, it looks and feels like he is flying through giant trees that protect him from the wind and rain. He watches out, maneuvers Red away from the beam of the ion cannon, and collides with space debris. Red grumbles at the damage she will definitely sustain in his consciousness but he pays no heed to it as there are far more pressing issues to concern himself with, like for example, tearing down the three Galra fighters on Pidge’s tail. Ha.

“Thanks, goofball.” He snorts at the nickname she has given him (which stuck, by the way) but it feels like he has taken a bite of a green apple straight from the grocery bag, savoring the juiciness and sourness of it.

The battle reaches a victorious conclusion after that and they call it a day. Lance, recognizing the silver lining behind his “superpower”, decides to keep it to himself for now.

✦

Or maybe not. 

His knees buckle at the same time Shiro does during another training session. It feels like he fell into tar, where no matter how hard he tries to pull his limbs out of it, he can’t escape unless someone reaches out to help him.

Both of their names are exclaimed at the same time. Allura and Pidge dart to Shiro’s side while Hunk and Keith to his. _Huh, why is Keith with him and not with Shiro?_

“Lance! Can you hear me?” He cannot pinpoint where that question came from because it feels like–

“I can’t move my arms and legs…” Hunk and Keith exchange distraught glances but before they can ask him to elaborate, he spots Shiro crawling towards him despite Allura and Pidge’s harsh objections.

“Lance, are you okay?” He chokes on his own spit because Shiro is the third person to ask him that. Shiro’s trauma does nothing but haunt and torment him and yet, _and yet_ , he still prioritizes his teammates’ health over his own. Lance gazes at him and detects an aura of black blotched with violet. He reaches up to touch it and when he pulls his fingers away, it looks like they have been bruised and it feels like they have been burned.

“…Lance?” They eye him with concern, slightly perplexed at his action.

“I’m good.” He answers even though it is a little late for that. Better than nothing.

“How about you though?” Shiro is caught off guard at his unforeseen inquiry before leaning his forehead onto his and subsiding into quiet laughter. It feels like listening to the stars do the same while Lance lies on his back, conversing with the midnight sky and drawing solace from it.

 

* * *

 

承: the development

Lance toys with the bandages around his hand. He doesn’t get to have an opening to clear up the situation regarding the consequences of his “superpower” to everyone thanks to Keith. He plucked Lance from their team after they calmed down. No questions asked. He is the one who cleaned and wrapped Lance’s fingers in bandages before leaving stains of purple on the fabric.

The subsequent epiphany that dawns on him prompts him to choke because if Keith’s aura is red, then his must be blue. It doesn’t take a goofball like him to ascertain that red, when mixed with blue, becomes purple. 

“I knew I’d find you here.” Lance’s soul almost jumps out of his body at the declaration; he turns to his right to see Keith striding into the room. They found it together a few months ago. It is just a vacant room with floor-to-ceiling windows but to Lance, it feels like his own bedroom window at home where he observes the stars and fantasizes of touching them with the tips of his fingers. 

“Samurai.”

“Sharpshooter.” Keith situates himself in front of him on the floor, the toes of their shoes barely touching. Lance notices the purple emanate from their feet right away, like fully-bloomed hydrangeas bursting from the earth.

_Why hydrangeas?_

“How is your hand?” Lance cannot seem to find his missing voice because Keith’s red looks like the tint splashed on his mother’s cheeks when his father comes home with bee stings after fighting them over a single ethereal flower, an orchid– his mother’s favorite.

“…Lance?” He mutters a curse under his breath. He should really put an end to his ‘spacing out’, as Keith took note of before. 

“It's healing.” Keith lets out a hum at his response but replies nothing in return.

The more Lance stares at Keith, the more vivid his red becomes. It is starting to look like the bouquet of roses that his sister received from her now girlfriend after weeks of dancing around each other. It is starting to feel like the blood pumping in his veins when he flies Blue for the very first time.

Lance breaks eye contact then, feared of what he might see if he doesn't stop watching. However, his gaze finds no means of escape as the purple from their feet gradually climbs up to their legs.

“Keith.” 

“Yeah?”

“Do you see that?”

“See what?” 

“Purple.” 

“Oh, you mean when they mix our Lion colors together?” But aren’t they the Red and Black Paladin now? Are they still the Blue and Red Paladin to Keith? 

_“we did it. we are a good team.”_

And Keith’s aura, along with his, begins to become purple altogether and Lance can smell the mild fragrance of hydrangeas that he bought on a whim before. He placed them in a glass filled with tap water on his windowsill alongside his stars.

Keith carefully grasps his injured hand and unrolls the bandages around it. He kisses each finger, each bruise, each burn while he looks at him with those earnest eyes, confident that his kisses will heal his wounds. Lance gawks, dazed, at the purple smudges. It is starting to look like the ballpoint pen ink he used when he tried doodling hydrangeas on the back page of his Chemistry textbook as he wanted to find a way to attenuate the feeling of homesickness when he was boarding in the Galaxy Garrison.

“Feeling better now?”

“Infinitely so, thanks to you.”

“Oh, shut up.”

 

* * *

 

転: the twist

 

Lance is afraid. After the incident in the training deck, it only seems to get worse from there.

When Pidge slams her fists on the dining table because her extensive research in finding Matt hits an unanticipated dead end, Lance sprints to the nearest toilet to deposit the food goo he has just started eating for lunch because it now tastes like putrid green apples. He makes sure not to leave the bathroom until after lunchtime is over, perturbed that Pidge’s temper tantrum might only intensify.

One time, he discovers Hunk feeling more homesick than he does and it looks like sunflowers that have began to wilt because he forgets to water them. He so badly wants to give his best buddy a consoling embrace but he can’t bring himself to move, partially paralyzed by the negative emotion.

Lance has become physically sick and he feels alone and frightened now more than ever.

“My boy, you look quite pallid.” Lance’s soul almost jumps out of his body for the second time that week.

He checks if the Altean also has an aura and there it is, as orange as the peeled fruit that he eats whenever he is feeling sick.

“Coran… I’m fine.” It is blatant that Coran doesn’t believe it but he doesn’t insist. Lance is grateful for that. He kind of wants to enjoy his “superpower” while he still can.

Coran, being the good old man that he is, begins to babble about common viruses scattered in planet Altea and Lance solemnly lends half an ear. It looks and feels like basking in the last few rays of light as the sun sets into the horizon.

✦

Allura seeks him instead.

“Lance.”

“Princess.”

“What happened in planet Roloc?”

He bites his tongue before he can even reply with ‘nothing’. Because it isn’t just _nothing_ now now that he found out this “superpower” of his can affect him negatively in a physical way. If he prolongs this secret-keeping, he is not so sure if his body can still handle it.

“I…” Allura raises a perfectly-arched eyebrow at his evident hesitation.

“…I can see colors.”

“What do you mean, _you can see colors_? Of course, _you can see colors_! Wait, unless…” Lance visibly gulps. As expected from the last surviving member of the royal family of planet Altea; she already figured it out.

“Lance.”

“…Allura?”

“Look at me right now and relay to me the color that you see.” Pink. He sees pink and it looks like the Daria-i-Noor, one of the largest cut diamonds endowing the rarest shade of pink found in diamonds, that he read from a World History textbook. It looks and feels like a strawberry-flavored ice cream that does not melt in his hand even when it’s a hot summer day.

“Your aura is pink…”

“Hmm. Interesting.”

Allura elegantly waves a hand to active the Castle’s comms to shout only one order, “Coran, set a course for planet Roloc. We are going back.”

Lance hears everyone yell: “Wait, what?” 

_Oh, dear._

 

* * *

 

結: the conclusion

 

Everything that happened afterwards has become a blur, really. After the Rolocian scientists along with Allura and Coran deemed that he is infected by a virus from their planet, they plan to extract blood from his system as soon as possible in order to biologically enhance the virus and spread it among the population so that they can finally see color again. Lance should feel like a hero right now but he can’t bring himself to feel like one. 

Allura forces him to take the medicine they concocted because they have absolutely no idea how the human body reacts to a virus such as that. They can’t allow his body to further deteriorate any longer.

“Okay.” And he downs it to get it over with.

The medicine has started to take effect now. He can no longer see the yellowness of the lemonade his father used to prepare or the greenness of the grass his brother just freshly mowed or the blackness of the heels his cousin slips on when she goes to work or the pinkness of the polish his niece loves to paint on her fingernails and toenails or the orangeness of the Galaxy Garrison uniform that he used to wear, which made his family proud. 

Lance quietly escapes from the commotion and trudges to his and Keith’s favorite room in the Castle. Keith already beat him to it, sitting on the exact same spot as Lance before. 

“I knew I’d find you here.” Keith whips around in surprise at his parroting before covering his mouth with his hand to chuckle behind it. Lance wishes to see him laugh more openly in front of him. 

When the doors automatically slide close behind him does he become aware of the color of the solar system planet Roloc is in: it’s red. He blinks and it remains red.

He realizes that Keith belongs there, among the red expanse of the solar system, as it turns him all the more celestial. Lance’s heart skips a beat as he realizes something dangerous but alluring at the same time. Keith concerning himself about his wellbeing, Keith being by his side instead of Shiro’s, Keith helping him slip away from the bewildering gazes of his teammates, Keith kissing every single bruise and burn on his fingers, Keith knowing where to find him no matter where he is. _Shit._  

“Blue, are you okay?”

Wait–

“…what did you just call me?”

“Uh, _Blue_? Like your Lion?” But it’s not his Lion anymore. The Red Lion is his now and yet, _and yet_ , Keith still thinks that he is the Paladin of the Blue Lion, still thinks that they are a good team as the Blue and Red Paladin, still thinks that he is his right hand man even before he becomes Red.

“Blue.”

“Uh, what about it?”

“List down the things that remind you of the color blue.” 

Keith stands up from his seat then, and saunters towards where Lance is planted. He catches a glimpse of hydrangeas tucked behind Keith’s ear but then he blinks and it’s gone. 

“The ocean. The sky. Hydrangeas. Your eyes.”

And it looks and feels like the redness of Keith’s lips on his own.

When they parted, Lance manages to mumble only one word: “Hydrangeas.” 

Keith tilts his head to the side in pure confusion, his messy black hair and rosy cheeks caused by the kiss eventually distracting him. He remembers now. 

_“Excuse me, may I please know the meaning of hydrangeas?”_

_“Of course, they’re–“_

✦ 

 

of gratitude for being understood (Thank you for keeping up with me, Red.)

of heartfelt and honest emotions (I really like you, Keith.)


	2. 花

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Keith plays a game of _effeuiller la marguerite_.

first petal: he loves me

 

When Team Voltron returns to the Castle of Lions after a somewhat successful recon mission, Keith is thrown an inquiry that he is not sure he is ready to answer…

“How did you first meet Lance?” Keith is suddenly back in the past, pressing a borrowed Chemistry textbook to his chest while he splutters a gratitude to a boy whose smile looks and feels like the afternoon sun brushing its sultry lips against the ocean. He catches a glimpse of inked hydrangeas on the back page of the textbook.

“I don’t remember.”

“Liar, liar, pants on fire.” And there it is, sprinkled on Pidge’s light brown mop of hair, flowers of the sycamore tree. _Curiosity_ , it whispers.

It is easier to lie through his teeth than to confess the truth from his heart.

✦

second petal: he loves me not

 

“Cargo pilot.”

“…Huh? Ah! What’s up, mullet?”

Keith bites his tongue before he can even reply with an ‘are you okay?’ for the second time that week.

“Nothing.”

“Are you sure?”

He slowly reaches for Lance’s wrist but ceases himself before Lance becomes aware of his gesture. _There are no hydrangeas wrapped around it that reminds him of the color purple,_ he repeats to himself.

“Yeah.”

“Okay, suit yourself.”

✦

third petal: he loves me

 

“Keith.”

“Hunk.”

“Did you ever get to talk to Lance before you got _kicked out_ of the Galaxy Garrison?” Keith sharply sucks in a breath before loudly releasing it. Why are they badgering him with this kind of questions?

He starts to reminisce about a boy whose laughter feels like the caress of a summer breeze on his hair. The boy places a blue-covered eraser on his open palm and coerces him to vow to never return it to him because he looks like _you need it more than I do_.

Keith never used that blue-covered eraser. Instead, it is tucked away in a safe place like his blade, a remembrance of a dear person to him. 

“Not really.” 

“Why don’t you just offer some bittersweets?”

Wait, what–

“…did you just say?”

“I said, _why don’t you just admit the truth_ , Keith?” 

 _Never_ ; but he doesn’t voice it out loud.

✦

fourth petal: he loves me not

 

“He asked me if I was okay. _Me_!” It’s been a while since someone, besides Keith, concerns himself over Shiro’s wellbeing.

“That’s Lance for you.” 

There are unshed tears of bittersweetness in the corner of Shiro’s eyes and there, firmly grasped by his prosthetic arm, is a bouquet of azaleas from Lance.

 _Take care of yourself for me_ , the attached card says.

✦

fifth petal: he loves me

 

“Number Four, may I ask you a question?”

“Coran, I don't know what you heard but whatever it is, Lance started it.” For some unknown reason, the old man’s moustache is adorned with volkamenia.

“Come now, my boy. Allow me this one time to inquire about _it_.” Seriously. Where are these questions even coming from, anyway?

“Are you perhaps in love with Lance?” Keith promptly chokes on his own spit.

 _Yes._  

“Quite frankly, it is hard to miss,” goes off Coran. 

Keith recalls a time when almost all of the girls and some of the boys at the Galaxy Garrison were intrigued by the person who caught his undivided attention. He, of course, civilly denied anything and everything regarding his [transparent] attraction to a boy. They should rather concentrate on far more pressing issues such as their standing in the simulator instead of delving into his [nonexistent] love life. 

“It’s good to be young…” Coran wistfully murmurs even though Keith hasn’t uttered a single word.

“Anyway, I will leave you with my wish, Keith: _may the two of you be happy_.”

✦

sixth petal: he loves me not

 

“Allura, why are we going back to planet Roloc?” Keith jogs towards where Allura and Lance separate ways. He looks like he is in desperate need of a toilet to vomit into.

“Lance is sick.”

“Lance is _what?_ But he didn’t tell us anything.” From the hallway, fully-bloomed Solomon’s Seals hang low.

“Oh, Keith. _But Lance only tells us secrets that he picked with the utmost discretion_.”

Allura is right. She always is, anyway.

✦

seventh petal: he loves me

 

When they parted, Lance manages to mumble only one word: “Hydrangeas.” 

He tilts his head to the side in slight confusion, his messy black hair and rosy cheeks caused by the kiss eventually distracting Lance.

_“They’re–“_

✦

 

purple, the combination of the calm stability of blue and the fierce energy of red.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> before anyone asks, yes, the flowers are all in keith's head like lance but with colors.

**Author's Note:**

> i have one of those things called [twitter](http://twitter.com/kozumekenmas) so hmu


End file.
